The mobile telephone industry has been associated with tremendous growth over the last several years. For instance, in the recent past, mobile telephones were only available to those of highest economic status due to service costs and costs associated with mobile phones. Moreover, network coverage was not extensive enough to enable robust service. In particular, only areas associated with dense population were provided with extensive wireless network coverage. Still further, the mobile phones that could utilize the networks to communicate were quite bulky, causing portation of the phone over any significant distance to be difficult at best. In more detail, antennas associated with these phones could be over a foot in length, thus making it difficult to utilize the phones in automobiles or other congested areas.
In contrast, today's mobile devices (e.g., mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), any suitable user equipment for communication, . . . ) can be utilized as full-service computing mechanisms. For example, many of the most recent and advanced mobile devices can be associated with word processing software, web browsing software, electronic mail software, accounting software, and various other types of software. Moreover, mobile devices can oftentimes be utilized as cameras, videocameras, audio recorders, and the like. Furthermore, network coverage has expanded to cover millions, if not billions, of users. Additionally, mobile devices have decreased in both size and cost. Specifically, modern mobile devices are often small enough to slip into an individual's pocket without discomforting the individual. Furthermore, many mobile network service providers offer phones and/or disparate devices at extremely low cost to customers who contract for service with such providers.
An unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) mechanism allows the Mobile Station (MS) user (e.g., via such mobile devices) and a PLMN operator (e.g., Public Land Mobile Network operator—the entity which offers telecommunications services over an air interface) defined application to communicate in a way which is transparent to the MS and to intermediate network entities. The mechanism allows development of PLMN specific supplementary services. The handling of USSD can be carried out independent of the applications. The USSD can be initiated by the MS user or by the network by utilizing the network initiated USSD and the mobile initiated USSD respectively.
A network (e.g., Mobile Switching Centre (MSC), Visitor Location Register (VLR), and/or a Home Location Register (HLR), etc.) can at any time send a USSD operation towards an MS and/or mobile device (e.g., also referred to as user equipment). This operation may be either a request (asking the MS to provide information) or a notification (requiring no information in the response from the MS). No prior provision of USSD is required, although provision of services which make use of USSD may be required. All USSD requests, notifications and responses (except responses to notifications) contain the USSD string, an alphabet indicator and language indicator. In regards to mixed networks, communicating such network initiated USSD messages can be problematic and/or extraneous. Conventionally, network type information is provisioned on a per-subscriber basis in at least one of a Server Control Function (SCF), Signaling Transfer Point (STP), and/or another network entity utilizing a mapping technique and/or an emulation technique. Such conventional techniques are costly, inefficient, and meticulous.